What I've Been Reading

For as much downtime as there is in January, I haven't gotten as much reading done as I'd like.  Well...I haven't finished as many books as I'd like; I'm working through a book on nature journaling, a novel, and a giant tome on Edison--all of which I hope to report about in February...or maybe March.

For now, here are the three books I did read this frosty January:

:: Leaving by Karen Kingsbury
I think some things are too close to us to write about well; for Karen Kingsbury, her real-life daughter's departure from the nest might have been weighing too heavily on the author as she wrote about Bailey Flanigan's first foray into the world.  I found the plot to be slow, circling around and around the same emotions far more than was necessary...and even the actual plot points didn't provide as much action or event as I've seen in previous Kingsbury novels that I enjoyed greatly.  This was a disappointment and I was surprised by that.

:: Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv {recommend}
The first half of this book opened my eyes to statistics and policy/paradigm shifts in our local governments and culture that have greatly restricted how children experience the outdoors--not to mention the fact that they spend far less time outdoors than I or certainly previous generations did.  The second half of the book became too much about policy and sweeping changes for my season of life, but I appreciated the new knowledge and recommendations for how to keep nature a part of my daughter's life even though we live in the middle of a city.

:: Money Saving Mom's Budget by Crystal Paine {recommend}
Oh my goodness.  I have love love loved everything this woman has ever written on her blog.  Seriously.  The series about living in a little basement apartment in which she never had to move the vacuum from one outlet to another to clean her carpets?  I'm there.  It's nice having the core of her message in one tidy volume; there wasn't much new material for longtime readers, but I think I'll be rereading this book every December/January as I sit down and do my goal planning for the coming year.  (Oh, and all proceeds go to Compassion International, so have you bought your copy of Money Saving Mom's Budget yet?)


Would love to hear what you've been reading!